Out there tonight in this city there are three million people at the very minimum who just got laid. I detest adults and their easy screwing. They devalue it by doing it so much. They just have to roll over and grab some meat, and away they go, in and out, oooh oooh oooh ahhh. Christ, how boring it must get! If they could only look at it from the point of view of a frustrated adolescent again. The hungry virgin, on the outside peering in. Excluded from the world of screwing. Feeling that delicious sweet tension of wanting and not knowing how to get. The fiery knot of longing, sitting like a ravenous tapeworm in my belly, devouring my soul. I magnify sex. I exalt it. I multiply its wonders. It’ll never live up to my anticipations. But I love the tension of anticipating and speculating and not getting. In fact, I think sometimes I’d like to spend my whole life on the edge of the blade, looking forward always to being deflowered but never quite taking the steps that would bring it about. A dynamic stasis, sustaining and enhancing my special power. Harry Blaufeld, virgin and poltergeist. Why not? Anybody at all can screw. Idiots, morons, bores, uglies. Everybody does it. There’s magic in renunciation. I f I keep myself aloof, pure, unique…
Push…
I do my little poltergeisty numbers. I stack and restack my textbooks without leaving my bed. I move my shirt from the floor to the back of the chair. I turn the chair around to face the wall. Push… push…push…
Water running in the john. Sara’s washing up. What’s it like, Sara? How does it feel when he puts it in you? We don’t talk much, you and I. You think I’m a child; you patronize me, you give me cute winks, your voice goes up half an octave. Do you wink at Jimmy the Greek like that? Like hell. And you talk husky contralto to him. Sit down and talk to me some time, Sis. I’m teetering on the brink of manhood. Guide me out of my virginity. Tell me what girls like guys to say to them. Sure. You won’t tell me shit, Sara. You want me to stay your baby brother forever, because that enhances your own sense of being grown up. And you screw and screw and screw, you and Jimmy the Greek, and you don’t even understand the mystical significance of the act of intercourse. To you it’s just good sweaty fun, like going bowling. Right? Right? Oh, you miserable bitch! Screw you, Sara!
A shriek from the bathroom. Christ, what have I done now? I better go see.
Sara, naked, kneels on the cold tiles. Her head is in the bathtub and she’s clinging with both hands to the bathtub’s rim and she’s shaking violently.
“You okay?” I ask. “What happened?”
“Like a kick in the back,” she says hoarsely. “I was at the sink, washing my face, and I turned around and something hit me like a kick in the back and knocked me halfway across the room.”
“You okay, though? You aren’t hurt?”
“Help me up.”
She’s upset but not injured. She’s so upset that she forgets that she’s naked, and without putting on her robe she cuddles up against me, trembling. She seems small and fragile and scared. I stroke her bare back where I imagine she felt the blow. Also I sneak a look at her nipples, just to see if they’re still standing up after her date with Jimmy the Greek. They aren’t. I soothe her with my fingers. I feel very manly and protective, even if it’s only my cruddy dumb sister I’m protecting.
“What could have happened?” she asks. “You weren’t pulling any tricks, were you?”
“I was in bed,” I say, totally sincere.
“A lot of funny things been going on around this house lately,” she says.
Cindy, catching me in the hallway between Geometry and Spanish: “How come you never call me any more?”
“Been busy.”
“Busy how?”
“Busy.”
“I guess you must be,” she says. “Looks to me like you haven’t slept in a week. What’s her name?”
“Her? No her. I’ve just been busy.” I try to escape. Must I push her again? “A research project.”
“You could take some time out for relaxing. You should keep in touch with old friends.”
“Friends? What kind of friend are you? You said I was silly. You said I was disgusting. Remember, Cindy?”
“The emotions of the moment. I was off balance. I mean, psychologically. Look, let’s talk about all this some time, Harry. Some time soon.”
“Maybe.”
“If you’re not doing anything Saturday night—”
I look at her in astonishment. She’s actually asking me for a date! Why is she pursuing me? What does she want from me? Is she itching for another chance to humiliate me? Silly and disgusting, disgusting and silly. I look at my watch and quirk up my lips. Time to move along.
“I’m not sure,” I tell her. “I may have some work to do.”
“ Work?”
“Research,” I say. “I’ll let you know.”
A night of happy experiments. I unscrew a light bulb, float it from one side of my room to the other, return it to the fixture, and efficiently screw it back in. Precision control. I go up to the roof and launch another beer can to the moon, only this time I loft it a thousand feet, bring it back, kick it up even higher, bring it back, send it off a third time with a tremendous accumulated kinetic energy, and I have no doubt it’ll cleave through space. I pick up trash in the street from a hundred yards away and throw it in the trash basket. Lastly—most scary of all—I polt myself. I levitate a little, lifting myself five feet into the air. That’s as high as I dare go. (What if I lose the power and fall?) If I had the courage, I could fly. I can do anything. Give me the right fulcrum and I’ll move the world. O, potentia! What a fantastic trip this is!
After two awful days of inner debate I phone Cindy and make a date for Saturday. I’m not sure whether it’s a good idea. Her sudden new aggressiveness turns me off, slightly, but nevertheless it’s a novelty to have a girl chasing me, and who am I to snub her? I wonder what she’s up to, though. Coming on so interested in me after dumping me mercilessly on our last date. I’m still angry with her about that, but I can’t hold a grudge, not with her. Maybe she wants to make amends. We did have a pretty decent relationship in the nonphysical sense, until that one stupid evening. Jesus, what if she really does want to make amends, all the way? She scares me. I guess I’m a little bit of a coward. Or a lot of a coward. I don’t understand any of this, man. I think I’m getting into something very heavy.
I juggle three tennis balls and keep them all in the air at once, with my hands in my pockets. I see a woman trying to park her car in a space that’s too small, and as I pass by I give her a sneaky little assist by pushing against the car behind her space; it moves backward a foot and a half, and she has room to park. Friday afternoon, in my gym class, I get into a basketball game and on five separate occasions when Mike Kisiak goes driving in for one of his sure-thing lay-ups I flick the ball away from the hoop. He can’t figure out why he’s off form and it really kills him. There seem to be no limits to what I can do. I’m awed at it myself. I gain skill from day to day. I might just be an authentic superman.
Cindy and Harry, Harry and Cindy, warm and cozy, sitting on her living-room couch. Christ, I think I’m being seduced! How can this be happening? To me? Christ. Christ. Christ. Cindy and Harry. Harry and Cindy. Where are we heading tonight?